The Lost Wizard of the Iron Spire

The Dour DM
Self Published
Knave
Levels 1-3

A magical barrier that has long held the threat of the Frostclaw Orcs at bay has suddenly begun to falter. As orcs begin to push their way south, Queen Lillian Farborn has sent out an edict across the kingdom: find the wizard Talbrek Zod before the barrier falls and the lands descend into war and chaos. Great rewards await those who answer the call. And so, mercenaries, soldiers, and adventurers begin to arrive in the town of Westhaven. Their motivations vary, but their goal is the same: find the wizard of the Iron Spire.

This sixteen page adventure features a few dungeons with about nine rooms each and a pretext of a hex crawl. Terse one pagers surrounded by a lot of text meant to be a framework, I suppose. Ya gotta commit to have something of value, and this doesn’t.

Yes, I know. It’s Knave. And it’s from an adventure jam. But the designer sent me a nice little note that said they were new to the OSR and brand new to putting together content like this. I know, I know. This is not a recipe for success. But, also, they’ve been reading the blog and released it for free. So, they tried to learn about adventure design and they didn’t expect their first work to be The Greatest Thing Evar. So, I’m going down this path.

The idea, I think, is to kick around the starting city a bit and pick up some rumors and then set off to the various dungeons to look for the missing wizard. Weirdly enough, he’s in his fucking wizard tower, so, maybe go there first? That makes both the hex crawl portion of this (which is really just an overland journey to the various dungeons) and the other dungeons just a sideline effort. The wizard iced in a wizard tower. Go to the wizard tower. If for no other reason than to loot it. Thus, our little section on gods, the city, the overland, the other places … these are not really going to contribute much in practice, I think. And one much question some of the choices in this section, beyond including the local gods that have no impact on the adventure. The city is a big map, with like four sentences on it, one for each business. “Best brothel in the city” or some such energy. There’s not much reason to detail the city AT ALL. While the NPC’s are terse described, I’m not sure their inclusion in a “hiring you” hook is really going to justify the word count spent about the city. And, in particular, the “you search a hex” table looks to be just weird for the sake of weird. “You find a sack of mushrooms,” Ok. Great. That’s it. Im not really sure that’s enough to build an interesting encounter off of. 

“The enigmatic wizard Mezzerklop constructed his maze of mystery as a form of sick entertainment. Once inside he watches in delight as helpless souls traverse the murderous Maze” This leads us to rooms like “Painted blue room, a large lavish blue chest, glowing white question mark on top of the chest.” Or, maybe, the intro to the second dungeon: “Tormented by her appearance and madness, she preys on treasure hunters looking to rob the tombs wealth, warping them into undead zombie minions.”  We are presuming an adventurer economy. The bog witch doesn’t exist for her own sake, shes preying on treasure hunters. The wizzo has constructed a test. This is a little too meta for me. And, then, the tonal shift to super mario land just adds on to it all. Am I running a grim orc invasion or a pastel marioland? 

The dungeons here, the format used for them, is a little weird. We’re essentially talking about four one-page-dungeon type things. You get the map and the wanderers on one page and then about nine room entries on another page. Laid out in a two column table. A kind of first impressions in one column and then some details.mechanics in the second column. So, “1) The Chasm: Stalagmites cover the floors and ceiling, a deep fissure filled with strange mutated bodies, a rickety rope bridge.” and then in the second column “Trap!: Bridge collapses if more than one person tries to cross, 40’ drop. Mutant corpses grapple those who fall in.” I’m not sure I’m surviving a forty foot drop, but, good energy there. Always love a good Pulled Under By A Pile Of Corpses thing. Another example might be “Four statues of ancient elves that are covered in moss and mold, slippery and slimy stone tile floors, damp cold stale air.” I’m cherry picking a little with these, they are the better examples in the adventure and, perhaps, a way to do things. But you’ve gotta work those entries, given that they are so short, they need to all be hitting hard, And they do not. They tend to the one sentence variety, which is a little short. Just a couple more to develop things well would have maybe made all the difference. 

Also, the ratio here is off. Four pages, maybe eight with maps, for the dungeons. About … thirty rooms? In sixteen pages of adventure text? It just feels off to me, like the density is a lair adventure for 5e rather than something more involved.

And then, I’m confused. The final dungeon, in particular, the wizards tower. I’m kind of at a loss for figuring things out. The orc warband leader is standing outside of it. Why? I don’t know. All his minions are out raiding the city and on the wandering table for the hex crawl but he stands there alone, brooding. How do you get in to the tower? I don’t know. It says there is no entrance. I guess maybe you are meant to grab the portable door from a different dungeon? And then there are these glyphs and magic portal doors inside, that usually get powered by killing a Level six monster (!.) I’m not gonna pretend to understand Knave power balances, so feel free to ignore me on that one. “Lightning strikes every minute; hits character on 1 of d6 (3d6 direct damage).” WOOF! This shit is ROUGH!

So, perhaps an overly minimally described dungeons that show some promise in some of the rooms, with both evocative text and room ideas. Just not hitting very well, and a lot of space wasted on things that only tangentially impact the adventure. The jam contest constrained things to sixteen pages in a digest format, and I think the impact of tha shows. Just a tad more intro how the dungeons are supposed to work and a little more rooms for the wanderers and wilderness and town to breathe, A little more for the rooms. A scope, perhaps, too large for a city, hex crawl, and four dungeons.

This is free at DriveThru

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/498754/the-lost-wizard-of-the-iron-spire?1892600